Black Belt Nature and Heritage Trail

Alabama's Black Belt Nature and Heritage Trail runs 210 fully paved miles east to west, from Cuba near the Mississippi line to Phenix City on the Georgia border. It takes its name from the region's dark, fertile soil, which drove a 19th-century cotton boom after 'Alabama Fever' land speculation took hold in 1817, and which sits atop terrain shaped by the meandering Black Warrior, Tombigbee, and Alabama rivers. Roughly 500 years before that, the same land supported Mississippian mound-building towns with elaborate agriculture and ceremonial centers. The trail today provides access to Tuskegee University and to Civil Rights Movement sites around Montgomery, layering that more recent history over the antebellum plantation landscape the Black Belt is named for. Alabama designated it a state scenic byway in 2007, and the route later received a $340,000 Federal Highway Administration grant to support its wildlife habitat, state parks, and historic sites.

• Black Belt soil
• Tuskegee University
• Montgomery Civil Rights sites
• 210 miles
• Black Warrior River
• Mississippian mound sites
• 2007 designation